The present report is submitted in response to General Assembly resolution 61/106, by which the Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Optional Protocol thereto. As requested by the Assembly, a brief overview of the status of the Convention as at 3 August 2007 is presented. The report also contains a brief description of technical arrangements on staff and facilities made necessary for the effective performance of the functions of the Conference of States Parties and the Committee under the Convention and the Optional Protocol, and a description on the progressive implementation of standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services of the United Nations system. Recent efforts of the United Nations and agencies to disseminate information on the Convention and the Optional Protocol are also described.

わかりやすい障害者の権利条約 : 知的障害のある人の権利のために = Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities

Evaluating Model Fit

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

by Tony Booth and Mel Ainscow, Bristol, Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education (CSIE), 2011, 190 pp., £23.00, ISBN 978-1-872001-68-5 This is the third and “Green” edition – and the best yet. It ...

Index for inclusion: developing learning and participation in schools

A study was launched in 1969 among a nutritionally at-risk population in the Department of El Progreso Eastern Guatemala to determine if protein deficiency in infants and children delays mental development. It was designed as a clinical prospective trial in which subjects were exposed to either an high-calorie high-protein supplement Atole or a low-calorie supplement Fresco. Medical care was made available to both groups. Data were collected both longitudinally and through follow-up. This chapter focuses upon the longitudinal assessment and presents the methods used for developmental assessments conducted in infancy and the preschool years a review of published findings and the results of a recent reanalysis of data from those two early development periods. Subjects were drawn from two villages located in the department with the pool of potential subjects including all children aged 7 years or younger who lived in the villages at the time the study was initiated all children who moved into the villages during the course of the project and all children born in the villages between January 1 1969 and February 28 1977. In all 2393 children are included in the data set although the number of subjects for whom data are available on any given variable is considerably lower; sample sizes at each age for the tests of mental development ranged from 469 at six months to 857 at four years. Data from the Composite Infant Scale were analyzed using the mental and motor scores obtained at 6 15 and 24 months. A general linear model was used to analyze the data with treatment entered as a class variable and all analyses controlled for socioeconomic status (SES) sex and attendance. The preschool battery was first factor analyzed to reduce the large number of tests which would otherwise be conducted. Only tests considered to have minimally acceptable test-retest stability coefficients were therefore included in the analysis. A few moderately beneficial effects were found from supplementation with Atole with the effects strongest in children from the most needy families on the basis of SES composite score.

Early supplementary feeding and cognition: effects over two decades. Methodology and findings of the longitudinal study.

Background: Gender differences in educational outcomes encompass many different areas. For example, in some educational settings, boys lag behind girls on indicators of educational success, such as leaving certificates and type of school attended. In studies testing performance, boys typically show lower competence in reading compared with girls, yet tend to show higher competence in school subjects related to mathematics. While such differences in competence between the genders can be relatively small, they coincide with much greater differences in motivation-related variables emerging during the school years, and thus seem to channel students into lifelong gendered pathways via gendered educational and occupational preferences.Purpose: From a psychological perspective, we propose the Interests as Identity Regulation Model (IIRM) as a useful tool for understanding many of the gender differences in educational outcomes. Specifically, the focus is on two areas of research: girls’ and women’s under-represen...

How gender differences in academic engagement relate to students’ gender identity

One cause proposed for boys’ relatively lower academic achievement is a “feminisation” of schools that might result in a lack of fit between boys’ self-concept and academic engagement. Research so far has investigated math-male and language-female stereotypes, but no school-female stereotypes. Our study tested for implicit gender stereotyping of school and its impact on boys’ achievement in N = 122 ninth-graders from a large city in Western Germany using the Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT). Gender role self-concept and grades in math (representing an academic domain stereotyped as male) and German (domain stereotyped as female) were assessed using written questionnaires. It was found that, overall, students associated school more strongly with female than with male, and that this association of school with female was related to boys’ academic achievement. The more strongly boys associated school with female and the more they ascribed negative masculine traits to themselves, the lower their grades in German were. Boys’ academic achievement in math was unrelated to the extent to which they perceived school as feminine and themselves as masculine. Girls’ grades in both German and math were unrelated to their gender stereotyping of school. These findings emphasize the importance of fit between a student’s gender, gender role self-concept and gender stereotyping of school for academic achievement. Strategies to improve this fit are discussed.

Is School Feminine? Implicit Gender Stereotyping of School as a Predictor of Academic Achievement

Recent research in the educational context has focused not only on academic achievement but also on subjective well-being (SWB) as both play a major role in students’ lives. Whereas the determinants of academic achievement have been extensively investigated, little research has been conducted on school-related determinants of SWB in comparison with other students’ characteristics. In the present cross-sectional study, we set out to investigate whether perceived school climate predicts school grades and SWB above and beyond other variables that are important for SWB and academic achievement. A sample of 767 8th and 9th grade students (n = 361 female adolescents; age: M = 14.07 years, SD = 0.92) completed measures of SWB, perceived school climate, test anxiety, self-efficacy, and interest. Grade point average (GPA) indicated students’ academic achievement. Data were analyzed with latent structural equation models in which GPA and SWB were regressed on the school climate variables and students’ characteristics. Results indicated that a positive school climate as well as self-efficacy and the worry component of test anxiety predicted SWB and/or GPA after all other variables were controlled for. Directions for future research and the importance of school climate variables on adolescents’ SWB and academic achievement are discussed.

School-Related and Individual Predictors of Subjective Well-Being and Academic Achievement.

Teachers’ belief that math requires innate ability predicts lower intrinsic motivation among low-achieving students

Male students show less academic effort and lower academic achievement than do female students. The present study aimed to shed more light on the reasons for why male students show low academic effort despite the finding that this undermines their academic achievement. We explored whether students experience psychological benefits from showing low effort or “effortless” achievement in school and whether these benefits are greater for male than for female students. In two experimental vignette studies with independent samples of German ninth graders (N = 210) and teachers (N = 176), we systematically varied student targets’ gender, effort, and achievement and tested for effects on targets’ ascribed intelligence, popularity, likeability, masculinity, femininity, and gender-typicality. The “effortless” achiever was rated as more popular than students showing high effort. Teachers perceived the effortless achiever as the most intelligent target. Academic effort further increased students’ ratings of a low-achieving target’s likeability and students’ and teachers’ ratings of all targets’ femininity as well as decreased students’ ratings of all targets’ masculinity. Students and teachers perceived targets showing low (vs. high) effort as more similar to a typical boy, whereas teachers perceived targets showing high (vs. low) effort as more similar to a typical girl. Results indicate a need to understand the psychological benefits of low academic engagement, especially for male students, and to address the feminine stereotyping of (academic) effort.

Anke Heyder

Papers

How gender differences in academic engagement relate to students’ gender identity

Is School Feminine? Implicit Gender Stereotyping of School as a Predictor of Academic Achievement

School-Related and Individual Predictors of Subjective Well-Being and Academic Achievement.

Teachers’ belief that math requires innate ability predicts lower intrinsic motivation among low-achieving students

Boys Don’t Work? On the Psychological Benefits of Showing Low Effort in High School